Carrboro Music Festival showcases diverse local talent

The Town of Carrboro will host its annual music festival on Sept. 28 and 29, showcasing musical talent from within the Carrboro community and North Carolina as a whole. This is the 22nd year of the festival, and the festival organizers anticipate that it will be the best one yet.

The festival will kick off on Saturday with multiple acts at 2 p.m. in the Carrboro Town Commons, followed by a free show at the Cat’s Cradle at 8:30 p.m. The main event on Sunday will feature a variety of acts throughout the day to provide every attendee with something they’ll enjoy.

Glenn Jones, the music director for the festival, said he is ecstatic about the acts he chose to play this year. Jones, a dedicated musician who has played in past festivals, said he intensively pored over every band’s application to find the right acts for this year's festival.  

“As music director, my main role was helping to look at the hundreds and hundreds of applications and trying to decide on the program,” Jones said. “I really feel like we came up with a deep and diverse pool this year, maybe one of the strongest ever.”

Jones said some of the acts that will be playing at the festival include indie rock, acoustic singer-songwriters, jazz, Latin dance, Indian music and several ukulele ensembles. There will also be a dedicated hip-hop stage in the Cat’s Cradle back room for the entirety of Sunday.

“Even the casual listener will be struck by the breadth, diversity and depth of the talent around here," Jones said. "It’s really amazing. For a little town, there is an amazing amount of talent right here.”

While Jones was primarily in charge of curating the festival’s line up, Emma Griffin, a recreation supervisor for Carrboro’s Recreation and Parks department, oversaw the coordination of the festival. Since this is the 22nd year of the festival, Griffin said there is a lot of cooperation and coordination from established connections in Carrboro’s music scene.

“This part of the festival has become like a well-oiled machine,” Griffin said. “Luckily for us, we have a lot of community involvement from our local venues and vendors that want to continue being a part of the festival.”

Despite community effort and coordination, Griffin said it is still a lot of work to organize the logistics and operations of the festival. She hopes the enjoyment that the festival brings to attendees will make the hard work worthwhile.

“I’m most excited to see everyone who comes out have a great time," Griffin said. "That’s the best part of my job. We put in this work into planning an event like this, and I love seeing everyone from the community come out and just enjoy themselves in a relaxed setting with their friends and family.”

David Joseph is the owner and general manager for School of Rock Chapel Hill, a school for budding musicians in the area. School of Rock’s house band will be performing at the festival, playing a variety of classic rock covers from Led Zeppelin to Kansas.

“We’ve got such a great, amazing scene here in Chapel Hill, Carrboro and just the whole area, and to have our kids included in that is a huge honor," Joseph said. "It’s another opportunity for our kids to get on stage to hone their skills. We have a credo at School of Rock: we put on shows to teach music, we don’t teach music to put on shows.”

The festival organizers and performers both feel that the festival is a great way to cultivate a sense of community in the Chapel Hill and Carrboro area. Joseph said that music is important to society and feels the community-oriented style of the festival is a great place for musicians.

“Music is bringing joy to a world that sorely needs it,” Joseph said. “I’m always looking for ways to get (our kids) out there and share that joy.”

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